Tag Archives: advertising

| Ad brainwash: 15 biggest LIES ever told by major advertisers!

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The 15 Biggest Lies Ever Told By Major Advertisers ~ Laura Stampler,  Business Insider,

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As if you didn’t know …
Ads brainwash you into becoming non-thinking consumers!

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Kim Kardashian Sketchers Shape-Ups Ad Super Bowl XLV

Zappos

Advertising doesn’t have a reputation for being the most honest profession. 

While most people know that banner ads from companies you’ve never heard of that promise to melt away “20 pounds in a week, no exercise required!” should be taken with a grain of salt, some huge and highly respected brands are also guilty of telling their consumers major lies to make sales.

You’d have to be pretty dumb to believe some of them. Skechers once claimed that by simply putting on a pair of their shoes you’d magically get buns of steel. Others  went so far as to cite fake studies to prove their false selling points.

Here are the 15 biggest offenders.

15. That Dr. Koch’s Cure All cured all.

Starting in 1919, Dr William Frederick Koch created a medication with a drug that he claimed could cure “all human ills, including tuberculosis” and cancer.

But when doctors tested the drug in 1948, doctors found that glyoxylide, the drug in question, contained little more than distilled water. Koch treated cancer patients, many of whom died, primarily with the drug.

Although the FDA was vocal in their disgust with Koch, they couldn’t find enough evidence to press charges. Koch ended up fleeing to Rio de Janeiro in the late ’40s.

 

14. That Classmates.com will find your classmates.

Before there was Facebook, people were chomping at the bit to sign up for Classmates.com and contact their old high school friends and flames. The site eventually introduced a “Gold” membership, which allowed members to email their old friends.

Anthony Michaels was lured into the Gold membership after Classmates.com sent him an email saying that an old friend was trying to contact him. That turned out to be a marketing ploy, so Michaels filed a class action lawsuit for false advertising.

Classmates.com ended up paying $9.5 million — $3 per subscriber — in 2010.

13. That Airborne cures colds.

Airborne — marketed as “the one designed by a school teacher” — got failing grades when it became public that there were no studies supporting its claims to kill germs and bacteria that caused flues and colds.

“It was so bad,” David Schardt, a senior nutritionist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told NPR.

In fact, Airborne had as much effect on a cold as a placebo or a Vitamin C pill.

Airborne had to pay $23.3 million in a class-action lawsuit.

12. That certain pills are “scientifically proven” to increase the size of a certain part of the male body.

Both Extenze and Enzyte falsely promised to give men a “big new swing of confidence.”

Extenze ended up paying a $6 million settlement in 2010, and Enzyte’s Steve Warshak was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he over-billed his customers.

11. That L’Oreal’s face cream will make you look as good as Photoshop can.

11. That L'Oreal's face cream will make you look as good as Photoshop can.

The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority banned this ad for being “misleadingly exaggerated” due to excessive photoshopping.

The same goes for this Julia Roberts Lancome ad.

The same goes for this Julia Roberts Lancome ad.

Lancome

And Twiggy’s spot for Olay.

And Twiggy's spot for Olay.

Olay

11. That electric shocks cure AIDS and cancer.

Dr. Clark’s Zapper made a series of ridiculous claims that its supposed parasite-killing zapper could cure cancer and AIDS.

Hulda Clark’s book, “The Cure for all Cancers,” states: “All cancers are alike. They are all caused by a parasite. A single parasite! It is the human intestinal fluke. And if you kill this parasite, the cancer stops immediately.”

The Swiss-based company agreed to pay U.S. citizens refunds in 2004, and the director of enforcement at the FDA called the device “fraudulent.”

10. That gas is cleaner if it’s “crystal clear.”

Amoco launched a multi-million dollar campaign in the ’90s claiming that its gas was more environmentally friendly because it was “crystal clear” rather than a murky brown.

According to Mental Floss, ”at the time the country was going through a clear revolution.” Even Pepsi made a clear drink.

But the claim was unsubstantiated by any factual evidence and, therefore, Amoco was slapped with a fine by the FTC.

at the time the country was going through a clear revolution.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17036#ixzz2DMettjz9
–brought to you by mental_floss

9. That wearing sneakers makes you skinny.

Skechers‘ used celebrities like Kim Kardashian to shill its Shape-up sneakers, claiming that you only had to tie your shoes to lose weight.

The FTC disagreed, and the shoe company ended up paying a $40 million settlement.

This ruling shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Just a year before, also working under the assumption that people wanted to dress for work rather than go to the gym, Reebok claimed that its EasyTone shoes and clothing would automatically make people lose weight.

It ended up settling for $25 million, and everyone who bought the product was entitled to a refund.

8. That Hoover would fly people to the U.S. for free if they bought a vacuum. (Read the outcome below.)

8. That Hoover would fly people to the U.S. for free if they bought a vacuum. (Read the outcome below.)

In 1992, Hoover promised Brits two free round-trip flights to the U.S. if they spent just £100 on any Hoover item.

Sounds too good to be true? That’s because it was.

When Hoover found out that it was unprepared to provide consumers with the free flights, it extended, rather than call off the campaign. Consumers wanting their prize then had to contact the company and send form after form after form to claim their tickets. Hoover hoped that they’d tire people out before they’d realize that the plane tickets didn’t exist.

It lead to a parliamentary inquiry and cost Hoover £48 million.

7. That One A Day vitamins prevent prostate cancer.

Bayer had to pay hefty fines for claiming that one of its vitamin ingredients, Selenium, prevented prostate cancer.

In fact, studies have shown that Selenium not only fails to prevent the cancer in healthy men but can increase the risk of diabetes.

Bayer had to pay $3.3 million in Oregon, California, and Illinois for corrective advertising.

6. That Rice Krispies will save your children from Swine Flu.

In 2009, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies claimed, in big letters, that the cereal “Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY” by providing 25 percent of daily recommended antioxidants, vitamins, and nutrients.

The FTC told Kellogg to halt these “dubious” and unproven claims. Kellogg’s removed the wording on the boxes and explained that “While science shows that these antioxidants help support the immune system, given the public attention on H1N1, the company decided to make this change.”

One year before, Kellogg also got in trouble with the FTC for saying that Frosted Mini-Wheats increased kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20 percent — without the studies to back it up.

5. That Nutella is good for you.

For those who subscribed to President Reagan’s “ketchup is a vegetable” belief system, Nutella created ads that claimed that its delicious, hazelnut spread is actually a nutritious part of a kid’s breakfast.

Still, a mother of a 4-year-old sued, and Nutella settled for $3 million. People who bought Nutella between January 1, 2008, and February 3, 2012, could get reimbursed up to $20.

4. Another big advertising lie is that fast food looks as good in real life as it does in ads. Here’s an advertised versus actual Whopper:

The same goes for Taco Bell …

… and McDonald’s.

2. That Listerine cures everything from dandruff to cuts and bruises.

2. That Listerine cures everything from dandruff to cuts and bruises.

It couldn’t. Obviously.

Listerine claimed to be a cure-all since 1921, remedying colds and sore throats as well as acting as an after-shave tonic.

It wasn’t until 1975 that the Federal Trade Commission ruled the ads misleading and slapped the company with a $10 million fine to pay for corrective advertising stating: “contrary to prior advertising, Listerine will not help prevent colds or sore throats or lessen their severity.”

Then Listerine said that it was as effective as floss.

Then Listerine said that it was as effective as floss.

BillTsiakarosCreative via Flickr

This claim also proved misleading.

A U.S. District Judge ordered Pfizer, Listerine’s maker at the time, to pull the ads in 2005.

Although a 2010 class action suit against Listerine for the false advertising was thrown out for going “overboard.” The ads were pulled quickly and, therefore, weren’t exposed to a lot of people.

1. The classic lie, of course, is that cigarettes are healthy. This old ad for “Asthma Cigarettes” claimed to reduce bronchial irritation. “Not recommended for children under 6,” though.

1. The classic lie, of course, is that cigarettes are healthy. This old ad for "Asthma Cigarettes" claimed to reduce bronchial irritation. "Not recommended for children under 6," though.

Even Santa said cigarettes cured throat sores.

Even Santa said cigarettes cured throat sores.

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| Some Outrageous Facts about US Inequality!

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Some Outrageous Facts about US Inequality  ~ Paul Buchheit,  Common Dreams.

 

Studying inequality in America reveals some facts that are truly hard to believe. Amidst all the absurdity a few stand out.

1. U.S. companies in total pay a smaller percentage of taxes than the lowest-income 20% of Americans.

Total corporate profits for 2011 were $1.97 trillion. Corporations paid $181 billion in federal taxes (9%) and $40 billion in state taxes (2%), for a total tax burden of 11%. The poorest 20% of American citizens pay 17.4% in federal, state, and local taxes.

2. The high-profit, tax-avoiding tech industry was built on publicly-funded research.

The technology sector has been more dependent on government research and development than any other industry. The U.S. government provided about half of the funding for basic research in technology and communications well into the 1980s. Even today, federal grants support about 60 percent of research performed at universities.

IBM was founded in 1911, Hewlett-Packard in 1947, Intel in 1968, Microsoft in 1975, Apple and Oracle in 1977, Cisco in 1984. All relied on government and military innovations. The more recently incorporated Google, which started in 1996, grew out of the Defense Department’s ARPANET system and the National Science Foundation‘s Digital Library Initiative.

The combined 2011 federal tax payment for the eight companies was just 10.6%.

3. The sales tax on a quadrillion dollars of financial sales is ZERO.

The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that total annual derivatives trades were $1.14 quadrillion. The same year, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported a trading volume of $1.2 quadrillion.

A quadrillion dollars is the entire world economy, 12 times over. It’s enough to give 3 million dollars to every person in the United States. But in a sense it’s not real money. Most of it is high-volume nanosecond computer trading, the type that almost crashed our economy. So it’s a good candidate for a tiny sales tax. But there is no sales tax.

Go out and buy shoes or an iPhone and you pay up to a 10% sales tax. But walk over to Wall Street and buy a million dollar high-risk credit default swap and pay 0%.

4. Many Americans get just a penny on the dollar.

  • For every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.

  • For every dollar the richest .1% earned in 1980, they’ve added three more dollars. The poorest 90% have added one cent.

  • For every dollar of financial securities (e.g., bonds) in the U.S., the bottom 90% of Americans have a penny and a half’s worth.

  • For every dollar of 2008-2010 profits from Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon, General Electric, and Dow Chemicals, the American public got a penny in taxes.

5. Our society allows one man or one family to possess enough money to feed EVERY hungry person on earth.

The United Nations estimates that $30 billion per year is needed to eradicate hunger. Several individuals have more than this amount in personal wealth.

There are 925 million people in the world with insufficient food. According to the World Food Program, it takes about $100 a year to feed a human being. That’s $92 billion, about equal to the fortune of the six Wal-Mart heirs.

One Final Outrage…

In 2007 a hedge fund manager (John Paulson) conspired with a financial company (Goldman Sachs) to create packages of risky subprime mortgages, so that in anticipation of a housing crash he could use other people’s money to bet against his personally designed sure-to-fail financial instruments. His successful gamble paid him $3.7 billion. Three years later he made another $5 billion, which in the real world would have been enough to pay the salaries of 100,000 health care workers.

As an added insult to middle-class taxpayers, the tax rate on most of Paulson’s income was just 15%. As a double insult, he may have paid no tax at all, since hedge fund profits can be deferred indefinitely. As a triple insult, some of his payoff came from the middle-class taxpayers themselves, who bailed out the company (AIG) that had to pay off his bets.

And the people we elect to protect our interests are unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

| Is the UK About to Engage in a Stealth Default?

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Is the UK About to Engage in a Stealth Default? ~ Mike Krieger of Libertblitzkrieg.

If there was ever an article that should spark every British citizen to immediately shift their savings into physical gold this is it.  Basically, proposals are on the table to change the way inflation is calculated for bonds that payout based on the rate of change in prices.  Unsurprisingly, they are purposely attempting to use an alternative measure of inflation that allows substitution (so when people can no longer buy a steak and must spend the same amount of money on spam this shows up as no inflation)!  If this goes through, it is blatant theft.  This is why owning TIPS in the U.S. is a total fool’s game.  They will mark inflation to whatever level they want at the end of the day.  To whatever is most convenient at the moment.  You know, just like the banks mark their balance sheets.  But don’t take my word for it…

Key quotes from the FT article:
 

Holders of some UK index-linked gilts could see more than 40 per cent wiped off the value of their bonds, according to M&G Investments, as a result of technical changes to the way the retail price index, which underpins these “linkers”, is calculated.

The mooted changes are designed to eliminate “unjustified” causes of the persistent gap between inflation as measured by the RPI and the normally lower consumer price index, narrowing the “wedge” between the two measures by altering the way the RPI is calculated. Some industry figures believe the gap between the two measures could be eliminated entirely.

 

“To eradicate the wedge altogether would be tantamount to an event of default,”said Ben Lord, portfolio manager at M&G.

 

Full article here.

 

| WTC: Silverstein laughs all the way to the bank!

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Silverstein laughs all the way to the bank ~ Dr. Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today.

Insurer Caps WTC-Demolition Asbestos Payout at 10 Million.

In today’s news, American Home Assurance has announced that it is capping payouts for WTC-demolition asbestos claims at a measly $10 million.

The announcement underlines just how much cheaper it is to demolish asbestos-laden skyscrapers without a permit, than to follow legal procedures.

Larry Silverstein, a reputed illicit-sex-industry mobster, purchased the World Trade Center in 2001, shortly after the New York Port Authority lost an asbestos lawsuit and was ordered to remove all asbestos from the Twin Towers.  Cost estimates for that asbestos removal ranged from the low billions to the tens of billions – far more than the outdated, half-empty buildings were worth. (The City of New York had been desperately seeking a way to demolish the Towers since around 1990, but was prevented from doing so by asbestos issues.)

Silverstein would have gone bankrupt within a few years at most had the Towers not been illegally demolished on September 11th, 2001. Thanks to that illegal demolition, Silverstein – who had doubled the WTC’s terrorism insurance and changed it to cash payout when he finalized his purchase in July, 2001 – walked off with a 5billion dollar cash return on his 100 million dollar investment. When last sighted, Silverstein was back in court asking for another 11 billion dollars from airline insurers.

Silverstein is notorious for confessing on national television to the illegal demolition of World Trade Center Building 7.

During a recent interview

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/plugins/audio-player/assets/player.swf?ver=2.0.4.1

former intelligence community insider and  current Veterans Today Editor Gordon Duff stated that the crimes of 9/11 were conceived in New York City, by people linked to organized crime and the Israeli Mossad, as an illegal demolition project, and subsequently sold to corrupt elements of the Bush Administration, the intelligence community, and the military (especially the Armageddonite wing of the US Air Force). Duff added that many of those with direct knowledge of the crimes have come forward, and suggested that non-complicit insiders are working to bring the perpetrators to justice by any available means.

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| Muppets of the world unite!

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Muppets of the world unite ~ Nils Pratley.

What would change matters is if governments, among the most important Goldman clients, take their business elsewhere. That would be a proper blow to the heart of the organisation.

The Muppets

Goldman Sachs: will the Muppets bite back?

Photograph: Allstar/DISNEY/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Greg Smith was kidding himself if he believed the primary goal of any big investment bank is to serve clients’ interests. That charming notion was exploded decades ago. But Smith’s innocence when he set out on his career at Goldman Sachs 12 years ago is not the point. There are degrees of decline in moral standing and Smith paints a powerful picture of an organisation that, even after the banking crisis and a crisis of its own reputation, is incapable of sustaining the pretence within its own walls that the clients come first. There is no easy way to measure an organisation’s culture but when managing directors are referring to the customers as “muppets” – as Smith alleges five did in the past year - something is rotten.

Of course, the clients (or most of them) know they are at risk of being treated as muppets. “You’ve got to understand, we all hate Goldman Sachs too,” the boss of the UK’s largest fund management houses told me a couple of years ago. His point was that investment banks, led by Goldman, enjoy an extraordinarily privileged position in being trading houses, market-makers and advisers to companies. That makes them both impossible to avoid and riddled with conflicts of interest (there’s an asymmetry of information, as it is sometimes described).

Goldman and its investment banking brethren have survived the post-crisis clean-up because regulators and politicians have been persuaded that only modest reforms are necessary. Thus the Volcker rule in the US, seeking limitations on banks’ proprietary trading activities, has descended into a debate about details and definitions. The net result is that today’s investment banking industry looks remarkably unaltered from the pre-crisis version. The new rules of the game are the old rules of the game, bar a few minor tweaks. No wonder some Goldmanites are feeling cocky.

Will Smith’s insider’s account change anything? Hard to say. Goldman, we thought, was on its knees when its chief executive Lloyd Blankfein was hauled in front of Congress and when the firm settled with the Securities & Exchange Commission by agreeing a $550m (£350m) penalty in a case involving “Frankenstein” products. But the bank bounced back. Goldman’s share price fell 3% in early trading today – a chunky move but hardly an indication that investors think the roof is about to fall in.

What would change matters is if governments, among the most important Goldman clients, take their business elsewhere. That would be a proper blow to the heart of the organisation, and might even provoke defections from the top of the bank to rivals, something that would rattle Blankfein. But governments tend not to blackball firms because of an op-ed piece in a newspaper by a resigning employee. After all, Smith offered no concrete example of clients being ripped off.

But the picture would change again if a client/muppet were to speak out. In that case, it would be harder for Goldman to repeat its deadpan response that “we disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business.” The Revenge of the Muppets would be a show worth watching.

ALSO SEE:

| Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs! 

 

| End of an Era: Encyclopedia Britannica halts print after 244 years!

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Encyclopedia Britannica halts print publication after 244 years

The paper edition of the encyclopedia ends its centuries-long run, but is it a victim or beneficiary of the digital age?  ~ 

  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012.  
  • Encyclopedia Britannica

    Seven million sets later, Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer publish volumes in print. Photograph: Robert Mullan / Alamy/Alamy

     

    Its legacy winds back through centuries and across continents, past the birth of America to the waning days of the Enlightenment. It is a record of humanity’s achievements in war and peace, art and science, exploration and discovery. It has been taken to represent the sum of all human knowledge.

    And now it’s going out of print.

    The Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that after 244 years, dozens of editions and more than 7m sets sold, no new editions will be put to paper. The 32 volumes of the 2010 installment, it turns out, were the last. Future editions will live exclusively online.

    For some readers the news will provoke malaise at the wayward course of this misguided age. Others will wonder, in the era of Wikipedia, what took the dinosaur so long to die. Neither view quite captures the company or the crossroads.

    Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc, suggested that the encyclopedia was already something of a relic within the company itself, which has long since moved its main business away from its trademark publication and into online educational tools.

    “The company has changed from a reference provider to an instructional solutions provider,” Cauz said. He projects that only 15% of the company’s revenue this year will come from its namesake publication, mostly through subscriptions and app purchases. “The vast majority” of the remaining 85% of revenue is expected to come from educational products and services, said Cauz, who declined to provide dollar amounts but said the company was profitable.

    Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc, is owned by the Swiss banking magnate Jacqui Safra. The company’s websites, which include Merriam-Webster dictionaries, attracted more than 450 million users over the course of 2011, according to internal numbers.

    If the company’s move over the last decade into the education market is an impressive example of corporate versatility, the competitive difficulties the encyclopedia faces are easy to grasp.

    Wikipedia English has 3.9m articles. The comprehensive Britannica has about 120,000. Wikipedia is free. The DVD Britannica, which includes two dictionaries and a thesaurus, costs $30 on Amazon. Individuals will also be able to sign up for an annual $70 subscription (universities will be charged about $1 per student).

    Cauz said the product was worth the price.

    “We may not be as big as Wikipedia. but we have a scholarly voice, an editorial process, and fact-based, well-written articles,” Cauz said. “All of these things we believe are very, very important, and provide an alternative that we want to offer to as many people as possible. We believe that there are 1.2 to 1.5bn inquiries for which we have the best answer.”

    Asked whether the decision to end the publication’s monumental run had not caused a backlash inside the company, Cauz said the opposite was true.

    “The transition has not been that difficult,” he said. “Everyone understands we needed to change. As opposed to newspapers, we felt the impact of digital many years ago – we had a lot of time for reflection. Everyone is very invigorated.

    “We are the only company that I know of, so far, that made the transition from traditional media to the digital sphere, and managed to be profitable and to grow.”

    But what of the kids who will no longer grow up in the beneficent shadow of the physical volumes, or be guided in their learning by happy chance, as when they go looking for “kookaburra” and accidentally encounter “komodo dragon” on an adjacent page?

    “I understand that for some the end of the Britannica print set may be perceived as an unwelcome goodbye to a dear, reliable and trustworthy friend that brought them the joy of discovery in the quest for knowledge,” Cauz wrote in a company announcement. The product will improve, however, when it finally leaves the space constraints and black-and-white finality of print behind, he said.

    “Today our digital database is much larger than what we can fit in the print set. And it is up to date because we can revise it within minutes anytime we need to, and we do it many times each day.”